A number of factors can affect not only the deliverability of an email campaign, but also its effectiveness and conversion rates. AccuData Integrated Marketing’s team of experts understands how to optimize your email campaign to maximize its overall success.
Here are a few best practices to consider when getting ready to add email campaigns to your marketing mix:
- Audience – each email you send should have a specific purpose and messaging to match the audience segment you are targeting. You may be seeking to acquire new customers, introduce a new product, establish brand awareness or build customer loyalty. Much of the following best practices will be determined and adjusted based on your target audience. And remember that having valid email addresses for your audience will improve your email’s overall deliverability, minimizing bounce rates and ensuring the opportunity to engage your recipients.
- Time and date of the email send – when considering the best time to send your email, always take into consideration your target If your email deployment is a national send, your Email Service Provider should be able to send at a specific time in each time zone, ensuring your email is sent at the same time across the entire country.
- Sender reputation – this piece is critical when sending marketing emails. If the sender doesn’t have an average sending reputation of more than 90%, an email marketer can assume that the emails will get deferred (in a waiting/looping pattern) by the internet service provider (ISP) because it is deciding on whether it is a legitimately wanted email or spam.
- Landing Page – a unique landing page with a strong Call to Action can increase your email’s conversion rates. The Call to Action should be a strong offer specific for your intended audience with copy written for that targeted group. The best landing pages have only one goal, and your copy needs to engage visitors to convince them to take that action. The page length depends on the awareness level of your prospects, with additional details added for audiences that are not familiar with your company or products. Make sure your forms are simple and easy to fill out, and that buttons are clear as to where they will lead.
- Email Copy & Subject Lines – certain words in the copy and Subject Line can trigger email filters that will prevent your email campaign from arriving in its intended inbox. Words such as financial, financial aid, qualify, tuition, income, paying, free and lots of words typically used in legal verbiage like disclaimers are scanned too. Bulleted lists are a great way to break up the copy, but try to limit them to fewer than 5 bullets. And keep in mind that mobile devices will cut off a subject line over 32 characters!
- Mobile Responsiveness – with emails being opened on mobile devices 60% of the time, this is critical. When emails are made mobile responsive, they automatically size to the recipient’s device and the phone number is coded to become clickable on mobile to initiate the phone call on their device. Did you know that people check their mobile phone up to 150x a day?
- Email Creative – trigger words should be used sporadically or be included in images, such as the headers. Consider your target audience and use images that reflect them in age and ethnicity for the audience you are targeting. Strong Calls to Action should be placed high up in the email creative, or directly below the header image. Personalized emails improve click-through rates by 14%, but don’t stop at the first-name greeting. Personalize the delivery of your emails with automation.
- Cadence of Email Sends – consider your target audience and the action you would like them to take in response to your email marketing efforts in order to determine how frequently you should send an email. Receiving too many emails is the #1 reason people unsubscribe.
Remember to A/B test everything listed in this guide to determine what works best for your audience. From length of subject line to colors of the buttons on your landing pages, everything is worth testing and tweaking to get the best results.
And finally, here’s a statistic from the recent Email Evolution Conference 2016: on average, it takes 7 touches for conversion on B2C and 24 touches for conversions on B2B. So, consider your emails part of an overall campaign and make sure your branding and messaging are continued throughout to get the most effectiveness from your email campaigns.